Cat's Cradle (29 page)

Lou looked around at his people. He looked back at Dan. “You want it, buddy-boy. Okay. You got it. Me and my bunch are through here. We’re pulling out. Forget about all this equipment, you can have it.”

“My people are staying,” Doctor Bennett said, his voice firm. “I should imagine we’ll be needed before it’s all over.”

Lou snorted derisively. “The noble physician.” He looked at the OSS doctors. Again, he shrugged. “Aw, what the hell! We’ll stick around. Maybe we can help out.”

At precisely that moment, a young man was stepping off a plane at Oceana Naval Air Station near Virginia Beach. The Navy pilot and co-pilot who had flown him in from Washington state were glad to be rid of their passenger. The guy had not spoken one word during the entire flight. Just sat in the back and read reports of some kind. Then stuck the folders back in his briefcase. They both had seen that kind of briefcase before, too. The kind that if someone fools around with it, it blows up. Guy wasn’t very old. Maybe twenty-four, twenty-five, at the most. But hard-eyed. Odd looking, kind of slanty, icy eyes. Not really Oriental eyes; but more Eastern European, Slavic eyes. The guy had a car waiting for him. He got behind the wheel and drove off without even looking back.

Oh, well, the pilot thought. He’d flown Agency guns and spooks before. Probably would again. But this guy was military. Everything about his bearing smacked of hard discipline. The cold-eyed dude could have put on a clown’s costume and any career GI could have recognized him as military.

The pilot put his passenger out of his mind. Neither he nor the co-pilot would ever mention him to anybody. Even each other. They knew better. They both knew a walking gun when they saw one.

They just wondered, silently, who was about to get wasted? And why?

* * *

Grace sat in her hot house and sipped iced tea. It was so hot the ice melted just about as fast as she put it in the glass. She had heard Vic scream in fright. Once. Then she heard him howl in pain. Once. Then the night had swallowed any further sound, returning to its hot, silent gloom. Through the closed windows, she had heard the sounds of what she guessed to be chewing. She knew she should be horrified; should be feeling terror and revulsion and all sorts of other emotions.

She felt only one emotion.

Relief.

* * *

Emily and Alice sat in the Ramsey’s den looking at their husbands, sitting across the room from them.

The phones had stopped working. Dead. The men and women had no way of knowing what was happening outside the closed, very hot house. Only that the town seemed to be filled with cats. God, where had they all come from? It was frightening. Eerie. The cats were everywhere.

* * *

A couple of miles outside of Valentine, the man and woman stared at the dark outline of the garage/ storage area. That was where the bulk of cats were. And the cats were behaving very strangely. They were circling the building. The inner circle moving clockwise, the next circle counter-clockwise; that system repeated for a dozen circles.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” he said.

“I have,” his wife said.

He looked at her. “Oh? Where?”

“In a horror movie. It’s some sort of devil dance.”

“In that movie, who won?”

“Satan.”

* * *

The town of Valentine, and a three mile radius, circling the town, lay like an egg on hot pavement-gradually cooking. The area’s population of dogs lay under porches, in sheds, by the sides of houses. They lay in packs, for protection. They had seen what had happened to dogs who shunned the safety of the pack. They had been torn to bloody bits by the cats. When this was over, if it ever was, the dogs would return to being friends or enemies-whatever. But for now, a canine truce was holding. The dogs did not understand what was happening, only that survival was the most important thing in their lives. When they rose for a drink of water, they went together, en masse, some standing guard while others drank. They maintained a very low profile.

* * *

Dozens of the thumb-sized, savage little worms escaped the fire around the trailer. They hunched and slithered away from the heat, crawling into empty buildings, holes in the earth, into vehicles, and under the fence. They slipped silently from the terminal grounds, into the country. And began to breed.

7

Mille and Kenny had crawled out of the crates at the sight and sound of Dan and his men. They stood silently, listening. They made no attempt to conceal their fear.

“Stay with us,” Dan told them. “But stay out of our way.”

“Yes, sir,” they said.

“All right, Lou,” Dan said. “I want a half circle cordon around the grounds where we believe the girl is hiding. At first light, we’ll try driving them toward this area. You game for this?”

“Sure, Sheriff. But what happens when your hard-nosed buddy, Gordon, finds out about this and moves his people in to stop us?”

“I don’t know,” Dan admitted. “I’ve thought about that. It’s a surprise to me that he isn’t already here, right now.”

“Yeah,” Lou said, his voice low. “I think something’s in the wind. Gordon made his appearance just about dark, then split. Said he’d be back, but I haven’t seen him. Aw, what the heck, buddy? I don’t see where he presents much of a problem. Dodge thought he was working for the Reds, didn’t he?”

“That’s what he told me.”

“Well, that’s easy, then. If I see him, I’ll just shoot the traitor. I hate a Commie.”

“Dan?” Chuck said, walking up. “The power company boys are here. And they sure are goosy about this. One of ’em stumbled upon what’s left of that woman the worms ate. I ’bout had to handcuff him to get him to stay.”

“He’ll stay if I have to chain him to his truck,” Dan said. “How about the wire?”

“We’ve got every roll of wire we could find in this part of the county. I busted into the hardware store and swiped a dozen rolls of five foot chainlink. And something else, too. This situation is gettin’ weird.”

“Good God!” Taylor said. “Now what?”

“Cruisin’ patrol just called in. All of Miller’s people, the civilians, have left. No SST rig, no nothin.’ Just the military guards manning the roadblocks. The others just vanished. The MPs say they don’t know what is going on.”

“I do,” Lou said. “It’s all gone sour. I guessed it about an hour ago. You guys hang on for a second. I’ll find out what’s going down.” He walked to his trailer, leaving the door open. They could hear his voice, muffled, as he talked with someone on the phone. He returned a few minutes later, a strange look on his face. “We’re high and dry,” he said to one of his people. “Beached like a whale. The Office of Special Studies no longer exists. Period. The FBI is rounding up agents all over the country. Dodge’s last report cinched it. Federal warrants everywhere. Most of our civilian money has dried up. The bigwigs are diving for cover.”

“How about us?” Lou was asked.

“We cooperate with the sheriff here, and that will be taken into consideration. In our behalf.”

“Good,” Chuck said with a grunt, glaring at Lou. “That means when this is all over, I can kick your butt.”

Lou looked at the much smaller man and grinned. “You’d really try to do it, too, wouldn’t you, you little hillbilly?”

“No, I’m not gonna try, Lou,” Chuck told him. “I’m gonna do it.”

Lou grinned hugely. “Maybe. But later, fireball, later. First things first. The Company’s put a contract out on Miller and the bitch with him.” He looked at Mille and mock-bowed. “Excuse me, my dear-the lady with him. Some top gun is coming in. Maybe already here. I’ll know him—or her-if I see him. I probably won’t see him.”

“I’m going to report everything I hear and see around here,” Mille said.

“Have at it, darling,” Lou said. “You’ll never see the touch. You won’t be able to prove a thing.”

“The what?” Mille asked.

“The hit. The kill. The burn,” Lou told her.

“How grotesque!”

“I don’t believe it,” Doctor Goodson said. “That only happens in the movies.”

“That’s what you think, Doc,” Lou said. “It don’t happen everyday; but it sure as hell happens.” He looked at Bennett. “It’s gonna be a long night, Doc. Pass out the bennies.”

Bennett nodded and went into his lab. He returned in a moment with a large bottle of white pills, handing the bottle to Lou.

Lou shook out a handful of the powerful amphetamines and began passing them out.

Captain Taylor recoiled in horror. “I most certainly will not take dope.”

“Don’t be a jerk, goody-two-shoes,” Lou told him. “We’re all gonna need all the help we can get staying alert tonight and in the morning. These are government issue tabs.” He looked at his watch. “These will kick your butt for about eight hours. Don’t wait until you’re down before taking the second one. When you feel this one wearing off, pop another.”

“Good Lord!” Taylor complained. “And I’ve been preaching against dope for twenty years.” He grimaced as Lou put two pills in his hand.

Lou grinned. “Just think of yourself as an old hippie, Captain.”

“I can’t think of anything more disgusting,” the captain said, swallowing the pill. “I don’t feel anything,” he said with a smug smile. “Probably won’t work on me.”

Lou just laughed. “Oh, but when it does, man, you’re gonna be a sight to see.”

“Never,” the captain said grimly.

Dan said, “Captain, get on the horn and pull as many troopers in here as possible. We’re running the show now. Have your men beef up the roadblocks. Have the rest of them join us.”

Taylor nodded and walked off toward a Virginia Highway Patrol car.

“Your people ready to go, Lou?” Dan asked.

“Sure.” Lou slapped the sheriff on the arm. “I told you we’d be allies before all this was over, didn’t I, buddy-boy?” He waved to his people. “Let’s go, boys and girls. Time to round up the hants and spooks.”

Dan just shook his head and stared as the man yelled for his people to get moving. He thought: Lou may be the world’s biggest maniac, but he was long on courage and so were his people. They knew, to a person, the risks they were taking, walking headfirst into the unknown.

“He’s a complicated man,” Denier said, watching Lou leave the area.

“That would not be my way of describing him,” Dan said. “I wonder if he knows what he’s getting into, or if this is just a game to him.”

“He knows,” the priest said quietly.

Chuck walked up to Dan’s side. “We found breaks in the fence. Looks like that’s where Bowie and the engineer got out.”

“Pass the word to all units, county and state, to shoot them on sight and bring the bodies back here. They’ve got to go up with the others.”

Chuck sighed. A hard choice for Dan to make; rough to put it into words. Bowie had been well-liked by everybody.

“I know,” Dan said softly. “But it has to be. I just wonder where he
’
s—
they’ve—
gone.”

The men turned as Goodson walked up, a glass tube in one hand, flashlight in the other. “Look at this,” he said.

“It looks like a great big maggot,” Dan said, reluctant to even touch the glass containing the squirming, ugly worm.

“What is it?” Chuck asked.

“Bennett says his resident entomologist has never seen anything like it. It’s a brand new species. But this one appears to be dying. So they have a very short life-cycle. About twenty-four hours.”

“What can kill them?”

“Fire,” Goodson replied. “Crushing them. Nothing else seems to faze them.”

“Wonderful,” Taylor said, catching the last bit. “On top of everything else.”

The men noticed that Goodson kept shaking the tube. Chuck asked him why he was doing that.

“To keep it from eating through the top. They’ll eat anything except glass and metal.”

Taylor looked at the ugly worm and shook his head in disgust. He walked off to join his troopers.

And outside the terminal complex, someone began screaming, the faint sounds drifting over the night air.

Dan looked in the general direction of the scream. “Someone didn’t follow orders and left his house.”

“It’s probably gonna get worse,” Chuck said.

No one had looked in on Wally, lying in the hospital trailer. Wally had begun a hideous metamorphosis. What was left of his shattered leg had blackened with stinking rot. The darkness had wrinkled and spread, now covering most of his body. He jerked in agony as the mutation spread to his neck, up his head. His face contorted and altered, becoming wrinkled and dark. He rolled from the bed, tumbling to the floor. No one heard the noise.

He lay for a moment, the pain gradually subsiding. Dragging his shattered, half eaten leg, Wally found the side door of the trailer and slipped out, unnoticed. Keeping to the dark shadows, he followed the fence line, seeking escape.

* * *

“Even if we were to kill the priest,” Anya mused aloud. “I do not believe that alone would be the answer. Something is very right here, and something is very wrong. I believe the Garrett person is the key to it all.”

Pet sat by the girl’s feet, listening, the cold eyes unblinking.

Both knew the woods around their location were filling with humans. But neither knew the why of it. They both knew the Old Ones were free of their entrapment. They both knew that at dawn they must make their move. They had twelve hours to complete what they were created to do. Dawn to dusk. They had been birthed to be worshipped and to serve the Dark One. The thrust of their existence was to deliver evil, to spread it wherever they might roam, to recruit souls for Satan, to cause pain and suffering and disease.

And they had twelve hours to establish a firm foothold here. If they could dominate for twelve hours, no power in heaven or earth could dislodge them.

But they had never been able to complete that task. Not since the religious base in the desert had been destroyed.

But now? ...

Perhaps.

And they both knew it was all a game. Nothing more. Just a game. Good on one side, Evil on the other. It was a game their Master always started, but seldom won in any great numbers of souls. But the Dark One was winning, little by little, slowly but surely, and in the strangest of ways and places and people.

This new dawning, only a few hours away, could bring the greatest coup in recent memory. And if Anya and Pet could see it through, they would have eternal life. They would be immortal.

But Anya knew something was wrong. She did not think He was interfering—not directly. But as was usually His way, He was working quietly, remaining unseen and gently manipulating lives and events. And as usually occurred, that damnable, meddling Michael was sticking his nose in affairs that did not concern him. God’s warrior. God’s mercenary was a better way of putting it.

Anya had been told that earlier that evening. She had also been ordered not to fail.

That was that. One simply does not disobey the Master.

And not too far away from where Anya and Pet waited for the first rays of dawn, Bowie staggered toward the Garrett house.